Iran Gloats over Democrat Victory in Midterm Elections

Iranian officials took to social media on Tuesday and Wednesday to gloat over the Democrat Party’s big win in the U.S. midterm elections, taking it as a sign of the American public accepting Iranian victory and turning against President Donald Trump over his military action against Tehran. “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Iranian parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf said on social media platform X. “If the U.S. govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” he warned, sounding suspiciously like the anti-Israel Democrats who did well on Tuesday night. Iran’s elusive Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, posted a written statement that celebrated the election setback for President Trump, but doubted the trajectory of American policy would change. “Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken,” Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since becoming supreme leader in March, wrote on his website. Khamenei said “the Great Satan” still “seeks the unconditional surrender of the Iranian nation,” but “the situation in the Persian Gulf, particularly the Strait of Hormuz, has exposed the myth of an invincible America.” “Should such aggressions be repeated, the war’s scope will become much wider,” he threatened. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials said on Tuesday they were prepared to attack neighboring states like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with “new doctrine and new technology” if they dared to assist with further American operations. In a series of posts on X, Khamenei said the Democrat win should preclude his regime from making any concessions for peace. “The slightest inclination toward submission would cause the immense capital acquired through the blessings brought by the blood of our martyrs and the sacrifices of the entire Iranian nation to be lost. It would embolden the enemy to launch more wars, and carry out its next acts of aggression,” he said. “The Iranian nation will soon experience victory, prosperity, and comprehensive progress, and the stage will be set for an ever-deepening, more rapid decline of the Great Satan’s domination,” he predicted. Khamenei adviser Mohammad Mokhber said Trump was “slapped in the face by his own people” on Tuesday night. “The true winner in this arena was Iran, which transferred the cost of the war into the United States,” he said. The Democrats’ midterm election victory happened to coincide with the anniversary of Iran taking Americans hostage during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, an event commemorated with rallies organized by the regime on Wednesday. Participants celebrated the outcome of the election as a crippling defeat for America. “The fact that the might of these warmongering Republicans has been broken, something unprecedented in human history, means that from now on we will ​see the real war unfolding inside the U.S. Senate and among American officials,” said a demonstrator quoted by Reuters. An Iranian newspaper called Hamshahri celebrated the Democrat victory with an image that showed Trump bowed and blindfolded, like the Americans taken hostage by Iran in 1979. “Forty-seven years Iran’s captive: from the capture of the spies’ nest to the November 2026 U.S. Congress elections,” the headline trumpeted. The Iranian regime frequently justifies sacking the U.S. embassy in 1979 by portraying it as a “nest of spies.” Another Iranian newspaper called Jam-e Jam hailed the election as the “twilight of Trumpism.”